The Phoenix Candidate(10)

“No.” I scowl, bending to find my bra among the tangle of clothes on the floor. “Coming!” I shout down the hall.

“I’d say you didn’t quite,” Jared quips, and hands me my blouse.

I snatch it from his hands and scowl. “I would have, if we hadn’t been interrupted.” God, you’d think I was a nymphomaniac the way I’m acting, especially after two orgasms last night.

I shove my hands in my jacket sleeves and shake my hair out, the French twist history. Jared puts a light hand on my forearm. “We’re not done here.” His eyes flick to my disrupted closet and then the space by my bed where he was licking my breasts so thoroughly. “Not with either issue.”

I stride to the front door, ignoring Jared. I pull it open and find Aliza.

“We need breakfast. Something greasy.” Her ponytail is still wet from a post-workout shower, and the skin under her eyes is puffy from drinking last night.

“What are you all dressed up for—?” Aliza abandons her question as Jared walks into the living room, finger-combing his hair back into place. From my bedroom.

“Oh. God, Grace, I’m sorry. You’ve got company.” She turns to go, but this situation is already plenty awkward, so I salvage what I can.

“No. Stay. Jared, this is my friend Aliza, whom I promised to have breakfast with today.” I give her a look to silence her. I promised no such thing, but right now I’d go get a root canal with her if she could get me the hell out of Jared’s orbit and give me some time to think. “Aliza, this is Jared, uh, a political consultant.”

“Jared Rankin,” he supplies, extending a hand for Aliza to shake.

She takes his hand and blatantly checks him out. “Weren’t you in the bar … last night, with Grace?”

I purse my lips but Jared is too relaxed. “True. It was not quite a coincidence.”

“Your timing is perfect, Aliza. Because Mr. Rankin was just leaving.” I hold the door open that Aliza just walked through, giving him my best get-the-hell-out look. My D.C.-based assistant, Trey, calls it the “look of doom,” because it’s the one I give lobbyists who won’t take the first ten hints when they park their asses in my office.

“What time are you through?” Jared glances at his watch again. “We have many more details to work out.”

The way he drawls details makes my head spin.

“We’ll be back by one,” Aliza offers, and I scowl at her. She winks. Last night she was saying that she was going to get me laid come hell or high water.

This is hell.

“I’ll pick you up at two. I’ll text you with what to bring.”

I haven’t agreed to anything—not breakfast with Aliza, not some afternoon meeting with Jared—but in a whirl, he’s gone.





Chapter Eight





“It’s complicated.” I pour too much cream in my coffee and ignore Aliza’s probing. The nondisclosure clause prevents me from mentioning Senator Conover.

“Doesn’t have to be.” She drops her menu on the table and gives mine a nudge, forcing me to meet her gaze. “I thought you went home with him last night?”

“That part’s complicated, too.” I bow my head. I can’t help it. I feel a little guilty, even though it’s been five years. Five years and as many dates since gunshots shattered my family and stole my little boy.

“Grace, you’re allowed to date. You can’t dress in black and pretend sex doesn’t exist just because you’re a—” She hesitates.

“Widow. You can say it.”

“I know,” she whispers. “You’ve channeled everything you are into what happened that day. But maybe that’s too much?”

Maybe it is. My house is nearly absent of anything from my past life, except Ethan’s picture, but my work is absolutely defined by it. I ran for Congress less than a year after Seth and Ethan died. My very first bill was a gun control law.

And every time I get a mention on national news, the Time magazine cover of me crying over their headstones reappears, like a caricature of grief, the ultimate distillation of what gun violence can do to a family.

The violence of what it’s done to my heart has never been reported. I’ve slowly frozen, put my heart in cryogenic storage while I let my head take over. That’s what you need in Washington, anyway: your head, not your heart. When you start getting emotionally invested, you make bad decisions.

It’s painfully true.

“I’m the poster girl,” I remind Aliza, and I shrug, as if the title’s no big deal. “Jared’s consulting with me on some of the issues, seeing if we might bring some to greater national prominence.” It’s a half-truth, but it’s enough. Aliza’s just as allergic to politics as I am to the deadly dull world of real estate tax law, her specialty.